Writing from her “northerly edge,” is Whitehorse, Yukon poet Clea Robertsin her debut collection, Here Is Where We Disembark (Calgary AB: Freehand Books, 2010). Built with a storytelling ease, hers is a collection that writes of her geographic immediate, the surroundings and domestic and moments of simply living. Beyond the arc of straightforward narrative, where her writing compels is in the small moments, writing out not arcs but specific points, the pinpricks of smallnesses, such as in the piece “Seasonal Adjustments” or “Sunset, Little Atlin.” These pieces etch out almost like little koans, writing:

The light

has chosen

a path across

the water.

There were sections of the collection that read as too straightforward, requiring more nuance, some tightening up in spots, to let the compelling phrases and sections really come out. Still, hers are contemplative poems on a roughneck and potentially aggressive wilderness, letting the breath show where the breathing lies, suggesting so much more nearly as matter-of-fact, such as the poem “What to Carry With You,” that opens: